Category Archives: Personal

My old Galaxy Nexus died so I had to get a new phone. I would have loved to have replaced it with a new Nexus 5, but it’s a work phone, and work is paying for it, and work has a contract with Verizon Wireless. So my options for a phone with a relatively stock version of Android were pretty limited—really just the Moto X. But I’ve had enough of the power-hungry AMOLED display of the Galaxy Nexus, and didn’t want to deal with that again in a Moto X, so I picked the HTC One (M8), knowing people on xda-developers have already ported the stock Google Play Edition (GPE) build of Android to it.

When I got the phone, the first thing I did was install the so-called “DigitalHigh” GPE build from xda-developers, but what I found was anything other than a stock Android experience. There were so many tweaks, options, customizations, and glaring security issues (chmod 755 everything!) that it just put me off. Really, the whole xda-developers community puts me off. And since this is a blog, let me go on a little rant:

xda-developers, probably the largest Android modification community, is a place full of advertisements and would-be hackers who call themselves “developers” just because they can compile the Linux kernel and put it up on a slow, ad-ridden file host. No one uses their real names, no one hosts their own files, no one releases source code for their work, and no one documents what they do. And that’s to say nothing about the users, who bring the community down in other ways, but for whom I feel, because I know I would hate to be stuck with the bloatware and skins the carriers and manufacturers collude to lock onto Android phones.

Clearly I don’t think xda-developers is a very pleasant place. The problem is some people on there actually do really good, really interesting work. So it’s an inescapable, conflicting, sometimes great, but usually frustrating source of information for Android.

That frustration led me to port the Google Play Edition build of Android to my new HTC One (M8) for Verizon myself, hopefully demonstrating the way I think Android modification should be done in the process. Some points:

All of the modification is done in an automated way. I chose my favorite automation tool, Puppet, for the job, but shell scripts or Makefiles would work just the same. The point is to download, modify, and build everything required in a hands-off manner. Automation has the added benefit of doubling as a sort of documentation.

Everything is hosted by me without ads, or is otherwise freely accessible—no file hosts.

All modification is done with a light hand, only changing what absolutely must be changed. (Though I do make a concession to enable root access and the flashlight, but even that is done in a clean and transparent way that can be trivially disabled.)

I’m not going to pretend that this is novel, or innovative, or that it took some huge effort—it’s just modifying some configuration files. If you want to give credit somewhere, look at CyanogenMod. They’re doing Android right. They build from source and have a working version for the M8. Sadly, they’ll always be playing catch-up to Google. Still, I have a lot of respect for that team of (real) developers, and I based a number of modifications to the GPE build on their code, so thank you!

Sorry this post was more ranty than usual, but as you can see, I have strong opinions on this subject. If you made it this far, here is the result of my automation:

I leave this file here as a convenience to those who know exactly what to do with it and who are capable of using and understanding my automation tools, but simply don’t want to. If that is not you, then you probably shouldn’t be modifying your phone.

I’m looking forward to seeing how well this works when Android 5.0 drops.

UPDATE #1

Android 5.0 (“Lollipop”) has arrived and with a few small tweaks to my automation tools, I am pleased to provide a flashable image for the Verizon M8:

Compared to the 4.4.4 release, this build deviates even less from the official upstream image. In fact, the only modifications to what Google and HTC distribute are:

Add the Verizon device ID to the Device Tree image for booting.

Enable CDMA with two line changes in build.prop.

Set an override flag on boot to allow screen casting to work—a feature that is more prominent in Android 5.0.

Compare that to the “DigitalHigh” release on XDA which disables important security mechanisms (SELinux, ADB security, file permissions), changes a whole lot of things that don’t need to be—and shouldn’t be—changed (like the I/O scheduler, data roaming, animation speeds, and various WiFi settings), and continues to deviate further as time passes, with inclusions like the HTC Sense camera. At this point, “DigitalHigh” can hardly be called the Google Play Edition, and many of the changes are downright harmful. I would strongly urge you not to use it.

With my automation tools, you can see exactly what modifications are required for Verizon support, and you can run it yourself so you know you’re getting a build that is as close as possible to the way Google intended it to be.

UPDATE #2

Android 5.1 was released for the GPE M8 a couple of days ago, and I already have a build of it ready for Verizon M8 devices.

Judging by the state of the Verizon M8 XDA forum, I believe I’m the first to have 5.1 on a Verizon M8. Another score for automation!

UPDATE #3

As some of you have noticed, some new OTAs have been pushed out for the Google Play Edition HTC M8. I’ve been on vacation so I haven’t had a chance until yesterday to look into them, but now I’ve been able to tweak my automation code to get these updates working on the Verizon M8. The nice thing about these changes is that I can now use the publicly available incremental updates directly from Google rather than having to rely on the community to produce dumps of their updated devices. Anyway, here are the updates, to be applied in succession on top of the LMY47O.H4 build from above:

Specifically, should employees of University System of Maryland institutions participate in the State Retirement and Pension System (SRPS) or the Optional Retirement Program (ORP)? That was one of the questions I had to answer for myself as I prepare to start a new job at the University of Maryland. The SRPS is a defined-benefit pension plan and the ORP is a defined-contribution 401(a)-like plan. The default is the SPRS, and it seems like they do everything they can to steer you to it (I suspect because your contributions are how the State funds current retirees), but is it a better deal?

First, some details: the SRPS requires employees to contribute 7% of their salary to the plan. In return, after 10 years of service, you can retire at age 65 and receive a monthly allowance following this formula:

By contrast, the ORP is simple: the University will contribute a flat 7.25% of your salary to your choice of Fidelity or TIAA-CREF, and you can invest it however you want. The money is immediately vested. Additionally, you can take the 7% that you would have had to contribute to the SRPS and invest it on your own in a supplemental retirement plan or IRA. That’s a total of 14.25% of your salary going towards your retirement every year…comfortably within the 10-15% that experts recommend.

For me, considering it doesn’t vest until 10 years of service, the SRPS was right out. But as an experiment, I wanted to know which would be the better option if I worked for Maryland for 10 years. (The SRPS does allow you to withdraw your contributions compounded annually at 5% interest if you terminate employment before 10 years, but then you wouldn’t get the benefit of the State’s contribution to the plan, and you can almost certainly do better than 5% annually in the long-run by investing in a mix of stocks and bonds.)

I plugged in all of my numbers to the SRPS formula, and calculated an estimated withdraw rate for the ORP supposing a realistic inflation-adjusted growth rate. The results were clear: the ORP could provide me with about twice as much money during retirement. With results like those, I was curious whether the SRPS would be a good deal for anyone and under what circumstances that would be.

So I whipped up a little program to do the calculations for me. It has sliders for each of the input variables so the results can easily be compared for a wide variety of circumstances. The program works with your current salary and inflation-adjusted rates of return to give you a picture of what sort of spending power in today’s dollars you would have during retirement.

Consider a 35-year-old who makes $80,000 per year. If they expect to work for Maryland for 10 years and think they can earn around 5% in the market after adjusting for inflation (that’s a real annual return of 8% if you assume an average of 3% inflation), and intend to retire at 65 and expect to need income for 30 years in retirement, the ORP just barely comes out on top:

Indeed, that seems to be the turning point. Any older and you won’t have enough time to let those returns compound, and if you are any more risk-averse, then you won’t be able to generate the returns needed to outpace the pension system. In those cases, the SRPS would be a better choice for you, but only if you are in it for the long haul. You’d be wasting valuable investing time if you join the SRPS and leave before your contributions vest. Otherwise, read a book or two on investing, and do it yourself with the ORP.

But don’t take my word for it; do the math or put your numbers into my program and see what the better choice would be for you:

Of course, I make no guarantees that my program is accurate, but you can get the source code and check it out for yourself. Also consider investment risks and other factors such as plan benefits carefully.

This is a long post mostly so I can look back and remember what I did, but I’m posting it publicly in case anyone is in a similar position and could benefit from my research.

About a year ago I became eligible for my employer’s retirement plan, and at the time I was completely overwhelmed by this whole new world of mutual fund investments. Not only was I given a large selection of funds to choose from, but I was also given the choice of providers: Fidelity and TIAA-CREF. I did a little research, but couldn’t really decide what to do, so I just selected the defaults, Fidelity with the 2050 target fund, and let it sit.

Then, over the Thanksgiving weekend, I started reading the long-term investment thread at Something Awful where it quickly became apparent that (1.) choosing assets to invest in doesn’t have to be that hard, (2.) expense ratios (what a fund costs) matter a lot, and (3.) high-cost actively managed funds in general don’t perform better than their lower-cost index-based equivalents.

So I took another look at what was available to me in Fidelity, and I didn’t like what I saw. Two stock indexfunds, each tracking the S&P 500; one REIT index fund, and one bond index fund. The rest of the funds available were actively managed with expenses around 0.8% or more. Even the few Vanguard funds available to me through Fidelity seemed obscure and expensive.

Then I remembered about TIAA-CREF. I pulled up a list of their offerings, and it made me a little more optimistic. Not only are their options cheaper overall, but they also have index funds available for more market segments. Really the worst thing that could be said after an initial look is that they could have more international representation, but it would turn out that, for me, it doesn’t really matter.

I started reading TIAA-CREF’s literature and taking their asset allocation (AA) quizzes, you know the ones. Well, considering I’m only 25 and I have a good 40 years until retirement, I would consider myself more willing to take on risk than someone a little older. Their quiz would have me put 86% into equities, 9% in real estate, and 5% in bonds. Why 9% real estate? Why not ten, or eight? And can 5% of your portfolio really affect anything?

At this point, I should note that TIAA’s Real Estate Account (TREA) is a unique investment vehicle among providers in that it invests directly in commercial real estate, rather than in companies that manage real estate as the more risky REIT funds do. There is really nothing else like it, and that made it hard to reconcile with other popular AA tips I found on the internet, such as having a simple three-fund portfolio. I wanted to know whether I should include real estate, if I should follow TIAA-CREF’s advice for AA, why they chose the numbers they did, and also why the Bogleheads advocate slightly more conservatives allocations. I may be young, but I don’t want to turn the risk up to 11 just because I can. I want managed risk that I can understand.

So I picked up a copy of The Intelligent Asset Allocator by William Bernstein, hoping it would shed some light on my questions. To be honest, I was hoping it would have The Answer in it, that it would point me to The Optimal Asset Allocation. Thankfully, it did a whole lot better than that. It stated in no uncertain terms that there is no such thing as an optimal asset allocation (except in retrospect), and anyone claiming to have one is conning you. The book started off by providing useful metrics for measuring the performance (in terms of annual return) and risk (in terms of standard deviation) of different asset classes. It was an easy, quick read that gave me a few techniques for understanding the behavior of different asset classes, and how they’ve historically interacted with each other in portfolios. Best of all, it gave me the confidence to tackle the same sort of research on my own.